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Firefly-RK3399 is a development board powered by Rockchip RK3399, and the company behind the board has now launched a system-on-module called RK3399 Coreboard with 2 to 4GB RAM, 8 to 128GB flash, a PMIC, and a 314-pin MXM 3.0 edge connector exposing various I/Os.

The company provides support for Android 6.0.1 and Ubuntu 16.04 for the module, and we should expect the same kind of support as for Firefly-RK3399 board. In order to help their customers getting started before they design their own custom board for the module, T-Firefly also offers a complete development kit combining RK3399 Coreboard with a carrier board.

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The carrier board – which they call backplane – exposes the following interfaces and I/Os:

Either they’ve hidden it well, or they don’t have product page for RK3399 Coreboard on their website, and the only place where we’ll find some information is RK3399 Coreboard page in their online shop with the SoM going for $95 with 2GB RAM, 8GB flash, and $119 with 4GB RAM, 16GB flash, The development kit and variant of the SoM are not sold online (anymore), so you’d have to contact them to find about pricing and availability.

We’ve previously covered tuners or small boxes that allow you to watch free-to-air TV on your smartphone or tablet with products such as PT115m/PT115e or DTV Link box, but I’ve just noticed GeekBuying added TV030 DVB-T tuner that connects to the micro USB port of your smartphone, and sells for just $10.99 shipped.

TV030 TV mobile stick specifications:

Signal: 75 Ohm Digital TV Aerial Input

Punctured Codes: 1/2, 2/3, 3/4, 4/5, 5/6 and 7/8

Receive Frequency: DVB-T: 474 ~ 858 MHz (UHF)

Input: DVB-T

Bandwidth: 6/7/8 MHz

Dimensions – 27 x 18 x 7mm; antenna: 210mm long max

Weight – 14 grams

The stick sells with an antenna, and a CDROM apparently containing the Android apk for EZTV app. It requires Android 4.1-5.0 or greater with the following minimal requirements to watch:

With this type of requirements, it’s clear the tuner is not a new product, and I could find it on Banggood too where they provided the content of the CD with padtv_v1.0.1_933(isdbt).apk. Make sure DVB-T is a supported standard in your country, as I regularly receive emails from people in the US asking me why they DVB-T2 TV box is not working… That’s possibly why there are several bad reviews on Amazon and eBay, where I also found the cheapest price ($9.99). TV030 only supports DVB-T, not DVB-T2, but Banggood points to MyGica PT360 if you want the latter. It’s out of stock in most places, but Aliexpress still has it for about $23. The review below (really starting at 1:00) shows Mygica PT360 in action. Note that TV030 and PT360 use different apps.

The low end of the TV box market is now highly competitive with Rockchip and Amlogic battling to offer the cheapest solutions available, as we’ve seen in a recent factory price list of TV boxes with RK3229 based devices selling for as low as $17.8, and Amlogic S905W based boxes going for $17.5 and up (per unit) for orders of 200 pieces. Amlogic has been working on an even lower cost SoC with Amlogic S805X based on four Cortex A53 cores, the same Mali-450MP GPU, but no 4K support, and instead H.264, H.265 and VP9 video decoding up to 1080p60, as I found out in a document shared on Amlogic Open Linux website.

Amlogic 805X will be quite similar to Amlogic S905X and S905D with the same CPU by clocked at a lower 1.2 GHz frequency, the same penta-core GPU, TrustZone support, and Fast Ethernet. The main difference is that in order to lower costs, they limited the multimedia capabilities to 1080p video decoding, and 1080p video output. Those last two actually make it more similar to Amlogic S805 SoC, but instead of a four Cortex A5 32-bit cores, S805X comes with more powerful Cortex A53 64-bit cores, and VP9 support was added to S805X.

The processor is likely be used in both Android and Linux TV boxes, as the company’s Mbox P241 reference platform / development board based on S805X SoC, comes with either 512MB DDR3 or 1GB DDR4, coupled with eMMC flash, and an AP6255 wireless module supporting 802.11 b/g/n/ac and Bluetooth 4.2.

I’ve yet to see any S805X TV boxes, even on Alibaba, but I’d expect them to sell retail for around $20 including shipping. The processor could also be an interesting choice for low cost development boards, competing against Allwinner H5 solutions.

The device also runs Android 7.1, and ships with an HDMI cable, a simple IR remote control, and the power supply.

R3 Projector, and DS01 Digital Signage Player

We don’t have the full details about the last two devices to launch this month, but we do know RKM R3 will be an Android 6.0 smart Full HD projector powered by an Octa-core processor (maybe RK3368) coupled with 2GB RAM, 32GB storage, and delivering 220 lumen brightness, while DS01 will be a digital signage player powered by Rockchip RK3228 quad core Cortex A17 processor, and also sold with the board only.

Koogeek BP2 is an FDA approved smart blood pressure monitor that connects over Bluetooth to your Android or iOS smartphone, or WiFi to the cloud. The company sent me a sample for evaluation, so let’s get started right away.

Koogeek BP2 Unboxing

The device is sent in a cardboard package with Koogeek brand…

and some more derails about the specifications on the bottom of the package.

The Belter Blood pressure meter (ePA-46B) is substantially equivalent to the predicate devices.

Koogeek BP2 is the same as Belter ePA-46B, but just rebranded, and with a different mobile app.

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In the package will find the device with the cuff attached to the main unit with an LCD display.

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The top of the unit comes with a power button, an LED, a reset pin hole, and a micro USB port for charging the 400 mAh battery.

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The package also included a charging cable and a multi-language quick start guide.

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We’ll find marking for CE and FDA approval on the cuff, and it’s a medium cuff designed for arms between 22 and 36 cm circumference.

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The blood pressure monitor wraps aroudn your upper arm, and is kept in place with Velcro. But before going ahead, you may want to read the user manual…

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..with two pages per language, except for Chinese where there are more details provided. Beside English, and Chinese, other languages include French, German, Spanish, Italian, and Japanese. You may also want to charge the monitor before starting. It took about two hours to fully charge the device, with the LED blinking while charging, and solid once it is completed.

Koogeek BP2 Blood Pressure Monitor Review

In theory, you could use the blood pressure monitor without smartphone, by pressing the button once to power it, and another time to start measurement, with diastolic and systolic blood pressure and heart rate shown on the display at the end. But mostly people will likely prefer to use a smartphone to keep track of the evolution instead of relying on pen and paper, and download Koogeek app available for Android or iOS.

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Once it’s done, you’ll be asked to login and join Koogeek. THe latter can be done with an email, Facebook or Google+ account. I first tried with Facebook, and it failed with an HTTP 500 error, but I could go ahead with Google+.

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You’ll then be prompted to created a new user. For the date of birth, make sure to tap on the year, as it makes it much faster than scrolling through the months… Also indicate your height and weight, and click on create a new user.

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You’ll then be shown the timeline (empty), and can start using the monitor as follows:

Tap on the Heart icon

Select “Arm type” (first time only)

Place BP2 monitor on your upper arm with your elbow on the table to make sure the monitor is at heart level, and place your hand palm up

Turn on the monitor

It will establish a Bluetooth connection, and within a few seconds later the Start button will show up

Select the user (if more than one), and press Start, the cuff will inflate and take the measurement. This should take less than one minute

The results will be shown on the smartphone and the LCD display on the monitor

Koogeek BP2 monitor will automatically turn off after 15 seconds. Do not press the button, as it would just start measurement again

The screenshot on the right above shows the results for systolic and diastolic blood pressure in a diagram with 6 different zones:

Green – Optimal blood pressure

Blue – Normal blood pressure

Yellow – High blood pressure (within the normal range)

Orange – Mild hypertension

Orange Red – Moderate to high blood pressure

Red – Severe Hypertension

I’ve shot a video to show the full process.

In theory, after the first setup with the app, you can take measurements and upload results to the cloud without your smartphone. In the timeline, click the + button which will allow you to install a new device.

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The company also offers smart scales, thermometers, fitness trackers, etc.., but for our use case, I selected KS-BP2 device, and set it up to connect to my WiFi router. I then tried to make a measurement without starting the app, pressing the power button once to start it up, and once again to start measurement, and at the end I could see the WiFi icon on the display showing it upload the data to the cloud, but it may have gone too high, and to medical records heaven, as I was unable to retrieve the results in my phone. I had setup two users at the time, so maybe that’s why. There’s an unknown measurement section in the app, but the results were not their either.

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You can create and switch between users in the timeline by tapping on the blue round icon in the bottom left corner with the initials of the current selected users, or switch between users and access to more settings by tapping on the three bars icon on the top left, which will also allow you to set reminders, adjust settings such as app language, units, Google Fit support, and so on. We’ve created two fictitious users to take daily measurements on two different real 🙂 humans between Monday and Saturday, and for each user you can access a chart with the blood pressure over time…

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.. as well as heart rate, and a full list of measurements is also accessible. If you can see some outliers, it’s likely a problem with the measurements, but not due to the device. For example, Marge Simpson had a normal blood pressure only on September 11, but we can see the heartrate at 92 bpm was higher than during the other days, and so it must have interfered with the measurement, as we should have waited a little longer after sitting, before starting taking the blood pressure.

Koogeek BP2 (aka KS-BP2) works as expected most of the time, and results appears to be in line with reality based on each respective patient’s history, but I had troubles using WiFi to cloud function when not using my smartphone, and once the blood pressure monitor started to inflate, deflate, inflate, etc…as if it had troubles completing the measurements. I could easily stop it by pressing the power button to turn it off, and restarted it to make a successful measurement right after.

Apple recently released iPhone X, but at close to $1,000 it’s not for everybody. If you want the “social status” that comes with owning the thing, but have limited budget, and/or find spending $1,000 on a phone is ridiculous, Goophone has prepared Phone X smartphone for you that externally looks like an iPhone X, and only sells for around $105 and up. It just comes with 8 or 16 GB flash, and 2G/3G connectivity, but don’t you worry losing face in front of your friends, as it has a fake 4G LTE mode, and reports 64GB flash storage. Social life saved!

The phone only runs Android 5.0, but the company really made every efforts to prevent any potential embarrassment, and it will show a fake Android 7.0 version instead. The “photo” above is just a render, but they’ll certainly manage to make something that looks to iPhone X close enough, as Goophone has years of experience in doing copycats.

Last year, I wrote about Aeroscope, a portable Bluetooth oscilloscope that looks somewhat like a Stabilo Boss highlighter pen, and sends measurements over the air directly to your Android and iOS tablet or smartphone. It was introduced through a crowdfunding campaign which eventually failed, but Aeroscope can now be purchased for $199 on Amazon US or their own website. If you’d prefer WiFi over Bluetooth, and would like something that also works on Windows, Linux, and/or Mac OS X, IKALOGIC has just launched IkaScope WiFi oscilloscope probe compatible with all popular mobile and desktop operating systems.

Battery – 420 mAh battery good for about 1 week battery life with daily regular use.

Dimensions – 161mm long

IkaScope specifications are slightly better than the ones of Aeroscope when it comes with analog bandwidth and sample rate for example, but the battery capacity is lower. However, the latter is likely more than compensated by ProbeClick technology that will only measure when a contact is detected, hence saving power during idle times. One advantage of WiFi over Bluetooth is that it allows for a higher refresh rate up to 250 fps.

The probe ships with a ground clip and a USB charging cable. OS support will be brought step by step starting with Windows, but Linux, Mac OS X, iOS, and Android will all be supported by November 9th if the schedule’s deadlines can be met, and all desktop OK will be supported by the end of September before shipping. More details about the software can be found in IkaScope knowledge base.

IKALOGIC has started taking pre-order for IkaScope for 299 Euros excluding VAT and shipping scheduled by the end of the year. “EARLYBIRD” coupon valid until the 20th of September will power the price by 10%.. Some more information, and the purchase link are available on the product page.

Warp United, a “Chinese Health 2.0″/point-of-Care medical technology company based in Shenzhen, launched Warp 3 medical recorder – an Android powered handheld device supporting various vital signs and ultrasound medical modules – earlier this year, and the company has now just introduced SanStar WS-3A motherboard powered by Rockchip RK3288 quad core Cortex-A17 SoC, and running Android 5.1 in order to allow engineers to develop and connect their own medical modules via the various interfaces of the board, and create their own medical products.

The board runs Android 5.1, and support up to two independent screens, or one 4K screen. The best way to find out what’s possible with the board is to check out what the company has done with Warp 3 medical recorder system comprised of a 7″ RK3288 tablet communicating with Volans 3 Vital Sign Module to gather ECG, heart rate (HR), respiration (Resp) rate, temperature (Temp), SpO2, pulse rate (PR), and non-invasive blood pressure (NIBP), as well as various “Urxa 3” ultrasound modules. Software includes an interface to display all those metrics on the tablet, as well as support for cloud based mobile health (mHealth) and EMRs (electronic medical records).